You open the door a little wider. So we go in. And you ask us to sit down.
My mother and I sit side by side. On alert. Ready to make a run for it if need be.
You are facing us. You must be eighty years old. Prominent cheekbones, thin lips, ebony eyes.
You look like us.
Then you start talking. You look mainly at me. And you wink.
It’s the three of us. It’s so natural it’s disturbing. As if we could just sit in silence and flip through women’s magazines together.
In a resonant voice, a voice younger than your years, you tell us about the neighbourhood, which is quiet, safe. The fellow tenants who don’t bother you, and Hilda, a neighbour with whom you eat sometimes. You tell us an old woman’s tales, but your voice and your eyes are twenty. Your smile too, animated, intense.
Your old-lady words shield you. You string them together while I search for you somewhere else.
Your apartment is small and bright. Books are scattered on the floor, as if forgotten mid-read. They, too, await your return.
In the kitchen, the sink is filled with dirty dishes. You eat alone.
If you had wanted, we could have come to eat with you sometimes. We would have brought quiches, fruit, smoked salmon. My mother would have set the table to avoid tiring you out. She sets the loveliest tables. But you’ll never know.
Now you are talking about your brothers. One of them just died. If you are sad, you don’t show it.
My mother tells you that she heard from Claire. Your sister who’s a nun. You laugh. Your teeth are white and straight, except for one. A rebel. Claire doesn’t seem to interest you, but she makes you laugh.
All three of us have the same crooked tooth. Have you noticed?
Then my mother asks why you left.
You don’t want to answer: No! Not that. Not today.
My mother doesn’t insist. We are cloaked in a thick silence. But you, you glide above it. Impenetrable.
I look at you one last time.
You have big breasts. Not us.
You have armour. Not us.
We are together. Not you.
We haven’t inherited everything.
My mother decides to leave. She would rather make a break for it before you can hurt us. You never know. Goodbye, Grandmother. You wink at me one last time.
We’re going skating on the canal. We’re on holiday.
It’s cold. We skate holding hands because I’m not a good skater and because we need to. The canal is long and empty. The smooth ice belongs to us. The cold is biting and brings us back to life.
My mother’s phone rings. It’s you. You tell her not to do that again. You tell her you never want to see us again. Ever.
My mother hangs up. It’s not the first time she has had to swallow rejection. All the past ones are still there. Stuck in her throat.
She has learned not to choke on them, but just barely.
She doesn’t say a word, but she doesn’t let go of my hand. We hold on to each other.
I hate you. I should have told you so to your face.
On the train, I fall asleep against my mother, who is smaller than me.
Then, one day, you die.
Five years later. In the same small apartment where you annihilated me with seven winks.
We are nestled away in the country, this family my parents built, that is nothing like you. A close family.
Claire, the religious sister you would no longer see, calls to tell us you’re dead.
My mother leans against the wall. Her stomach is Hiroshima.
She is finally rid of your absence.
Maybe she’ll start being normal. A woman with a mother who is dead and buried.
But the soft voice at the other end of the line tells us that a few days before you died you wrote your will, and our names are in it. The names of my mother and her brother, then mine and my brother’s.
We are your sole heirs. So, finally, you are inviting us over. We have to go empty your little apartment.
We set out into winter to meet you. Through the storm. Archaeologists of a murky life. Who were you?
We are on our hands and knees, searching.
Your closet. Hats. Dresses. Lots of black clothes.
I can’t help but plunge my nose into the fabric. Smells are usually so revealing. But here even they are furtive. Subtle, faint, hard to pin down. An accidental blend of incense and the sweat of days spent not moving. A subtle note of alcohol, perhaps?
In a shoebox there are pictures of us: me and my brother, at every age. You kept them. And my mother kept sending them to you year after year. Our ages are written on the back, traces of time lost, wasted, slipped away. It’s your loss.
My mother is sitting in your rocking chair. Gently, she touches you. Rests her hands where you rested yours. Rocks to the rhythm of a lullaby, the one she never heard.
I find your red red lipstick in the small bathroom. And short sticks of kohl, which you lined your eyes with, giving them power. I draw a line under mine.
My mother finds a piece of furniture, made by her father a long time ago. We take it down to the car. She takes the rocking chair too, carrying it on her back, and my father lashes it securely to the roof.
We’re leaving soon. I’m in your room. There is a small green plant in the window. It is leaning against the pane, drawn by the day.
Books are piled by the foot of your bed. I read a few passages at random, suddenly greedy for clues about you.
I find a yellowed cardboard folder between two books on Buddhist zazen.
It contains letters. Poems. Newspaper articles.
A gold mine, which I stuff into my bag like a thief.
We are leaving. I slip a worn copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra into my pocket.
We close the door behind us, forever.
We drive slowly through the storm. On the roof, the rocking chair cuts through the wind, heroically. I don’t know it yet, but I will rock my children in it.
I flip through Nietzsche, yellowed with age. There is a laminated newspaper article stuck between two pages.
The picture
